Chapter Eight
MISS MATFIELD'S NEW YEAR

A DAY or two before Mr. Golspie returned, Miss
Matfield, sitting with cold feet and a novel she
disliked in the 13 bus, realised with a shock that
it was nearly Christmas. The shops she passed every day
in the bus along Regent Street and Oxford Street had
been celebrating Christmas for some time; and it was
weeks since they had first broken out into their annual
crimson rash of holly berries, robins, and Father Christ-
masses. The shops, followed by the illustrated papers,
began it so early, with their full chorus of advertising
managers and window dressers shouting "Christmas Is
Here/' at a time when it obviously wasn't, that when it
did actually come creeping up, you had forgotten about
it Miss Matfield told herself this, and then remem-
bered that every year her mother used to cry, "What,
nearly Christmas already! I never thought it was so
near. It's taken me completely by surprise, this year/'
Yes, every year she used to say that, and year after year,
Miss Matfield would tease her about it. And now, Miss
Matfield told herself, she had begun to say it, just as if
she was on the point of becoming forgetful and absurd
and middle-aged. Oh-foul! She stared out of the
window. Those two miles of Xmas Gifts and lavish
electric lighting and artificial holly leaves and cotton-

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